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An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review has an update on Microsoft's effort to push Kinect gesture control technology beyond the Xbox console and make it a standard Windows computer accessory. Microsoft has sold Kinect for Windows hardware to developers since February and now products based on it are appearing, such as GestSure's system for surgeons in the operating room. Microsoft won't say when it will begin selling Kinect for Windows hardware directly to consumers, but seems poised to do so once enough developers have readied applications."

It's just a shame that the "no compromise" formerly-known-as-Metro interface was redesigned from the ground up for the new interfaces of today and they didn't include the Xbox accessories in that plan... (I was a little disappointed I couldn't use my Xbox controller to navigate the Windows 8 Xbox themed apps such as games, music, video for example)

“You could even tap out numbers on a make-believe number pad to call someone on your cell without actually having to take it out your pocket. Fuck knows how you’d talk to them, but who the hell cares when you’re basically Tom Cruise from Minority Report.”

With the technology likely to become commercially available within the next few years, analysts expect it to be popular among Kinect users and other people with no self-respect.

It's a bit different - in the iPad's case you're sliding your hands around wildly on a screen, leaving greasy finger marks on it, but at least people walking into the room know you're fighting with your iPad. With Kinect, you're waving your hands wildly in the air - no greasy finger marks, but people walking into the room will wonder if you're having a bad acid trip and trying to kill the spiders.

That being said, I know five people who own Kinects (only one has an XBox), but only one person who has an iP

The Kinect really needs to have several orders of magnitude greater resolution than the current system. It should be able to track individual fingers and facial expressions. Right now, it is just frustrating to use.

I disagree. My Xbox remote was destroyed about a month ago, so I resorted to using voice commands until I could buy a new remote. Since then, I haven't even considered buying a remote, and my girlfriend is even using the voice recognition as well. My favorite is the "next episode" during Netflix marathons. That was indispensable when I had the flu last week and was laid up on the couch. Obviously voice recognition isn't ideal for everyone, but for some reason it seems to be tuned pretty well to my voice.

I have the Kinect. I like it for some things. But I believe game developers need to spend much more time creating things for which the Kinect works well rather than trying to shoehorn it into existing games (including future versions, etc.).

But why don't you just get a modern Universal Remote? X-Box ought to be a standard option. Works fine for me.

I didn't even realize the xbox 360 had an IR port. I guess I'll have to program my receivers remote to control the xbox on DVD function mode =)

I should still be able to control it through the Kinect if I want since there's no reason for it to not work (given that third parties have figured out how to do media control with the Kinect it's obviously possible and something people have asked for).

The Kinect Gesture challenge over at Kaggle [kaggle.com] was a competition where the goal was to match gestures with a specified dictionary of previously-recorded gestures.

The problem isn't the resolution, it's the recognition algorithm.

A human looking at the videos could easily distinguish between gestures and interpret the meaning. The problem was even easier for a human because you only had to choose the closest match from within the dozen-or-so gestures in the dictionary. This leads me to believe that it's not a pro

The Kinect Gesture challenge over at Kaggle [kaggle.com] was a competition where the goal was to match gestures with a specified dictionary of previously-recorded gestures.

The problem isn't the resolution, it's the recognition algorithm.

Its a little bit of both, actually. The problem isn't resolution, from a hardware standpoint -- its the point density on the IR projector and the lens on the IR camera that limits how close you can be to a Kinect and still have any accuracy. Once your depth cues go wonky, gesture recognition becomes much harder.

Gesture recognition, while not trivial, is not intrinsically more complicated than whole body tracking. The way Kinect does it is very clever, knowing basically "where can the body have moved from wh

I have this application that keeps track of my personnel and HR resources. Before Kinect, I hated to fire people. It was always a miserable experience.

But now with Kinect, I love to fire people! I rewrote the code so all I have to do is highlight your HR Record, stand in front of my Kinect, and dance, baby, dance!!! Kinect made Christmas fun again. We're usually low on money around Christmas, and with the new fiscal year, we often have to lay people off in bulk. So, my HR staff and I have dance-offs to decide who goes and who stays! It's a real hoot! If HR wins, you stay for another day! If I win, *poof* you're gone!

I don't have any issues with Kinect it's pretty good hardware, you can get better but the idea and the price is rather good. If it came with my PC or was a fairly cheep upgrade say 50 to 75 dollars i"d pick it up.

Until they get that though I really doubt I'll pick it up. That and there needs to be a genuine application that kinect is genuinely a must have for.

When it first came out I thought "gimmick." Then I read blogs and new stories for over year after it came out with people talking about how cool it was. I still didn't believe it. But when it came time to buy the XBox for my kid, I decided we needed to have it just to see what it was about. I was actually excited to try it out. We lived our first weekend with the living room in disarray so we could have room to use it.

Of course, the novelty wore off very quickly and all it does now is collect dust and take up space in front of the TV. It's voice control sucks and using it with the menu system with gestures is just annoying. It's far easier to use the controller.

How about actually trying to get work done without the operating system changing in behavior on you, inexplicably losing data in applications because some requester popped up when you were exiting and intended to save, have the keystroke stolen and then the app exits without saving. Dumb crap like that. Also, less nagging, just shut up and let me do my work.

If Kinect allows Microsoft and partners receiving the video feed, recognize facial expressions and general movements, get audio, understand the room's geometry, etc. then I can see why a company would want to have such a device connected to every machine in every home!

Why the hell would a surgeon use hand gestures? Their hands are the most occupied part of their body! Speech recognition, or a helpful nurse/assistant that can hear you talk would be 1000 times better. The ONLY use I can see for a kinect in the operating table would be for recording physical locations by pointing and posibly measuring stuff on the fly (though I don't think the resolution is high enough yet for either of these tasks).

For surgery simulations, and training. It is becoming more popular to train students on these simulations (it is easier to simulate complications, than to wait for them to happen in real life patients). There is also research on whether remote surgery is possible. If it is, I assume the kinetic will be very useful.

If Microsoft is really serious about this, they should actively approach developers and send them SDK kits.I wouldn't mind having access to the tech and SDK for Zoom Player without having to jump through too many hoops.

Kinect is a success in that it sold a lot of units, but it's a miserable failure at selling games outside the dance genre. This year's release list is littered with Kinect games that bombed in spectacular fashion, as it's just good a good system of control for gaming.

Are they going to fix that, or are they going to just make everything else equally as bad as the gaming experience?

The new WinRT tablets coming out will all have USB ports. They really should build the Kinect SDK into the Windows Runtime so Metro (i.e. "Modern") apps can access it. Right now only desktop apps can access the Kinect SDK.

I like it. I would get one, if the price were right, and I'm assuming that it would bring something beyond what my HD web cam can do (and Kinect seems to have infrared now, so apparently that's a yes). The implications for Skype are obvious, but this could potentially be an easy way to perform simple tasks in Windows.

There is potential here. I love technology, so I say bring it on and let's see where we can go with it.